A few years ago, after so many phone calls to teachers, and waiting out the waiting lists, my daughters finally started taking the violin lessons they had begged for for years. They quickly wanted out.

Unfortunately for them, I decided that the lessons, practice, performances and musical education would be “good for them,” and went about adding the instruments into our lives (mostly this involved bribing the children to practice with candy or legos). Our teacher requires me (the real musicians’ mother) to learn with my children so that I might help them practice at home. To my children’s delight, I have found this requirement to be particularly humiliating.

I am reasonably accomplished in the music arena: I can strum a guitar, thump out some piano chords and sing most any song I hear. The violin is different. Who thought up this instrument? After three years, playing in tune is a challenge and the bow still hasn’t managed to make a pretty sound (though it no longer squeaks! Small win!). And my older daughter is passing me by in skill.

Maybe I’m a masochist somewhere in my heart, but I’m am simultaneously falling in love with it even as I blush to even write about it. It feels awkward to hold on my shoulder, uncomfortable to stretch my wrist around to press down the strings, and there’s still a chance that my fingers are too old to learn how to use vibrato on it. But I get these calluses now on the tips of my left hand fingers and I am carrying around a secret; a talisman. My hands (mine!), which are so often used for hauling household items, wiping children’s tears and butts, rushing to keep it all together, also have this hidden potential of something sweet– like they’re coated in honey and only I know it.

Thank you, violin hands for your awkward and clumsy trying, for believing over and over and over that we will learn something and make something beautiful.